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Friday, 17 April 2015

Helping children who are suddenly bereaved

Every year in the UK, hundreds of people die suddenly, leaving families devastated. Disasters such as road accidents, murder, suicide, heart attack and other fatal illnesses can affect anyone.

Bereavement is a difficult subject and the sad reality is that in
the UK a parent of a dependent child will die every 22 minutes, leaving 41,000
children without a parent each year. In addition to this, currently in the UK
309,000 children aged between five and 16 years old have been bereaved of a
parent or sibling.

If tragedy were to strike and you lost your partner, your parents (your child's grandparents), one of your children (your child's sibling), or your child suddenly lost a school friend how would you cope? How would you ensure that both your own grief and that of your child was handled effectively? Perhaps you're a godparent or a named guardian in a friend's will - how would you cope if you found yourself caring for a child who'd been suddenly bereaved? Where would you turn?

The Co-operative Funeral Care have partnered with CHUMS (the Child Bereavement, Trauma and Emotional Wellbeing Service) to offer the a number of films as a free resource to local schools,
medical professionals, community groups and bereaved families. The four
animated films include ‘Our Year Since Dad Died’ and ‘Our Year Since Grandma
Died’ and look at issues young people face when losing a parent or grandparent.

The launch follows on from the success of The Co-operative Funeralcare’s
Amy and Tom books, which are a tool for bereaved primary school children and distributed
free to over 25,000 family
liaison officers, schools, bereaved families and medical professionals across the
country.

The tools deal practically with an array of issues a child may face including:

Disbelief and denial

Shock

Managing new and strong feelings

Dealing with the 'why' questions

Explaining the role of A&E and the emergency services and how and why they may not have been able to save the person

Coping with the trauma of witnessing the death or incident

Survivor guilt

What happens with organ donation

Dealing with whether to see the body

What happens at a funeral

What happens after death

Fear that others will die

The Co-operative Funeralcare is the only organisation in the UK to make
the animated films available free of charge to key people and organisations in
a position to support bereaved children such as teachers, medical professionals
and community leaders.

The short animated films have been produced by Angel Studios and are
available for free on request from The Co-operative Funeralcare in your local
area.

Disclosure: This post has been written in association with The Co-operative Funeralcare.

It is so nice to see the child being considered. In my experience there's nothing being provided for children - but the last loss was quite a while ago now. I lost my brother when I was 3, my brother lost his mother when he was 14, and my son was 2. We have a charity called Winston's Wish around here and I have heard that they provide an excellent service.

I found this a little difficult to read as I lost my brother when I was younger and we got very little support as a family. I often think the children are forgotten about when there's a death. This sounds like a great initiative

What an astonishing statistic! I had no idea it was so high, but I suppose, when you think about it, an awful lot of the population do have children. I am glad these resources are available, it's heartbreaking to think what those poor youngsters have to cope with.

This is so needed. We are lucky to have an amazing charity here in Glos too which is Winstons Wish. I have taught many children who have lost a parent and it is heart breaking and makes you appreciate exactly what you have.

awww i love that they are tackling this so head on, I would not wish being in this position on my worst enemy so for a child its one of the most horrific things to face ... well done Co-Op Funeral care!

I love how gently proactive this is of the Co-Op Funeralcare. I take Kit and Ozzy for walks in our local churchyard from time to time and that's a lovely way of offering an opportunity for children to ask questions they have and to approach the topic of death before they even know of anyone who has died x

aw great post this is something i think is improtant to help children with , people sometimes forget that when they lose a fami;y member the younger children get pushed to one side and forgotton about as if they dont know the pain of the adults but in respect usually feel just as much pain and sorrow

We find talking about death so difficult often that it gives our kids little preparation, really lovely to see a company offer some practical advice as we often only have to deal with it when in the midst of our own grief.